Tales:
The Fenley Chronicles
The Streets of San Springfield
Another Saturday evening in Springfield – what to do? None of my pals were home, there were six bucks in my wallet, and the usual wealth of teenage amusements Springfield had to offer - bowling and Putt-Putt golf - did not appeal to me. TV was out - despite a TV antenna so tall it often brushed the undercarriage of low flying planes, the old Zenith could only pull in three and a half stations (you could get a snowy PBS when the sunspots were right). Anyway, Mom's favorite show was coming on, and watching another episode of "Maude" sounded as alluring as a root canal, even with the occasional glimpse of Adrian Barbeau to set the hormones racing. Once again, things looked grim for our hero...
But take heart! Only a few short weeks ago my many hours spent scraping Quarter Pounder effluent off the grill at McDonalds had finally paid off. I had exchanged four hundred of my hard earned dollars for a magic chariot capable of whisking me away from the checkerboard of soybeans and feed corn that is central Illinois. Yes, I was sixteen, and I owned A Car. Not just any car, but a fabulously UnCool 1961 VW Beetle! With a grunt to the parents, I stalked out to the driveway.
There squatted eighteen hundred pounds of German engineering; Hitler's "People's Car". And my my Bug had loads of personality. Sure, it had the stock forty horsepower lawnmower engine and baby moon hubcaps. And none of that non-essential stuff they put in cars these days, like power brakes, power steering, air-conditioning, padded dashboards, electric windows, airbags or cupholders. But it did have a new forest green paintjob and a cool stereo! Well, yes the paintjob was a $99 Sears special, but so what if the paint rubbed off if you touched the car? And sure, the stereo was a cheepo from K-mart - but I had installed a voltage converter to double the Beetle's six volt system so I could really crank up Molly Hatchet on my custom Radio Shack speakers. Despite her limitations, she was all mine, and like a million jalopies before to a million other sixteen year old boys, that Bug was the embodiment of freedom for me - the supercar that was capable of Getting Out of Here. (If only I had the gas money.)
Careful to avoid brushing up against the door so I wouldn't put a green stripe on my new black Charlie Daniels Band tour t-shirt, I hopped in and cranked her up. I popped in a Lynard Skynard tape and eased slowly down the driveway, wincing at the inevitable metallic crunch when the Bug's dual exhast dragged at the bottom. That driveway had apparently been graded for to provide the optimum angle for NASA moonshots, not to accommodate passenger cars.
To be continued....
Want more? how about another Molly Hatchet story?
